Gary Lightbody's 'Jim'll Fix It' project brings the Snow Patrol frontman together with REM's Peter Buck, She & Him's M Ward and Zooey Deschanel, Belle & Sebastian's Richard Colburn, Editors' Tom Smith, The Minus 5's Scott McCaughey and old pals Iain Archer, Jacknife Lee and Troy Stewart. No details have emerged of any arguments about song credits, or the top bunk beds.
Billed as a kind of country album, 'The Place We Ran From' has a little violin and some Nashville tunings from Buck, but it won't take any Snow Patrol fans out of their snuggle zone.
While they'll have heard better heartbreak songs from Lightbody than some of what's on offer here, 'Held in the Arms of Your Words' is stunning and 'Dead American Writers' does a lot of swaggering in under three minutes.
Neither vanity project nor must have, Tired Pony isn't as charming as Lightbody's work with The Reindeer Section or as intense as Greg Dulli's Twilight Singers, but there's enough here to justify another run out in the future.
Harry Guerin
